Our Roses vs Big Box Stores - We’re Putting it to the Test!

DAY ONE

Village Green Flowers

Only 12 Roses

Our 24

Their 24

Village Green Flowers & Gifts

🚛 Shipping Time - Our roses come in fresh from the farm with about 2-3 days between being cut at the farm to ready for sale at our store. We receive our roses “dry packed” from the farms direct, which requires more work on our end, but eliminates water damage, ethylene damage, mold and botrytis (a fungus that happens in shipping often when not dry packed).

💧 Processing - We use science-backed care - we strip the thorns, cut our roses under water, treat them with quick dip to fully hydrate them. Cutting stems underwater keeps air from getting into the rose and blocking water flow. It helps the flower stay hydrated by keeping a steady stream of water going up the stem.

🌹 Quality - There are different grades of roses grown, just like. Ours are the very highest grade. Grocery stores are the lowest.

❄️ Cold Chain - our roses stay in refrigeration the entire time, from farm to shipping, to our flower shop.

🕒 Average Vase Life: We can only guarantee them for 5 days because of different shorter life fragile varieties we carry, however, we constantly are told that our flowers last 2 weeks, especially our roses.

💐✨ PRESENTATION - our design-forward wrapped bouquets and vase arrangements are created one by one by the most experienced design team for maximum impact and elegant presentation. Arrives arranged, hydrated, and ready to enjoy — no cutting, unwrapping, or DIY.

❤️ Real Florist Support - Replacement Gaurantee - if there are any issues with your order, we take care of it!

🌱 Priority Sourcing - The Top Grade, quality farms give us priority, so we get consistent quality, freshness, etc, year round. We use the same farms all year round and they know us. We are known as “picky”… but they respect it! ;)

✔️ Experience - Our staff has over 51 years of combined flower shop experience. We know what we are doing. Even compared to other flower shops, our standards for care and handling and processing of our flowers is a grade above our competition.

🔷 Rose Head Size - A photo above shows the comparison

📏 Stem Length - 60-80cm length - See above for the photo!

Big Box Store

24 Roses

Our 24

Their 24

Big Box Store Brand

🚛 Shipping Time - Typically big box stores ship from the grower to a storage cooler in Miami usually, they can sit there for up to a week, then they ship to a local distribution warehouse, were they sit for usually 2-5 days. then they ship to the local retail store to put out for sale.

🚫💧 Processing - Remove from truck in display buckets already, add water where it is low and put on sales floor. Sometimes water tips out in shipping and they just fill up the bucket without re-cutting the stems, which cuts the vase life by many days. YIKES

🥀 Quality - the farms are using the cheapest methods and skipping steps to make the roses the cheapest on the market, NOT to ensure quality and freshness and vase life, or head size. Its like buying fast fashion, vs. buying quality, well made clothing.

❄️🌡️ Cold Chain - Frequently left none refrigerated in-store or during shipping. A broken cold chain, traps heat in the boxes, which causes flowers to blow open and not last, and sometimes to get mold when moisture is released and sits in a hot box.

🕒 Average Vase life: Often show signs of stress or petal drop within just a few days. Industry standard is an average of 5-7 days.

🛒✨ PRESENTATION - DIY arrangement required! Most bundles come unarranged, with leaves, thorns and guard petals to remove yourself, not the most thoughtful way to present a gift.

💔 No professional handling - Prepackaged bouquets are not checked for quantity or quality before they are sold. Flowers are often bruised or short counted. The experiment bouquet we bought, was sold as 24 roses, but only included 23 stems, and one was a stem without a rose head.. so only 22 roses!

❓🌱 Inconsistent Source quality - Farm sources and freshness can differ widely by shipment. You might get open blooms, tight buds that never open, or even wilting stems all in one pack

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❌ Experience - typically a person with less than 1 year experience handles this job, with very little training.

🔹 Rose Head Size - The comparison photo at the top of the page provides a clear illustration

📏 Stem Length - 50cm length - See above for photo!

How They’ve Held Up - Daily Photo Progression:

  • Day 1

    6-17-25 - See their 24 on the left, see our 12 on the right.

  • Day 2 Close Ups

    6/17/25 - Theirs ranged from 2-3", MOST being 2", while ours ranged 3-4, MOST being 4"

  • Day 2

    6/18/25 - Check out that red rose on the far side - already drooping.

  • Day 3 Close Ups

    6-19-25 - This guy on the big box side started drooping on day 2, and it’s only getting worse!

  • Day 3

    6/19/25 - We’re beginning to have some loose petals in the big box store’s brand.

  • Day 4

  • Day 5

🧪 How We're Doing the Experiment

We want to see if the roses we carry at Village Green really hold up better than the ones you might grab during your next grocery run—so we're putting it to the test. Our hypothesis? That higher quality flowers, handled with proper care, last longer and look better every day they're in the vase.

To keep things fair, we bought a fresh 24-stem mixed rose bouquet from a Big Box store right after a new shipment was stocked. We selected 12 of our own roses from the colors we had on hand that same day. Why only 12? A full 24-stem bunch of our roses wouldn’t even fit in the same frame - they're that much bigger and fuller! We did give you a size comparison of our 24 v their 24 at the top of the page, too.

We used identical vases, the same room, the same water, and even used their flower food in one and ours in the other. Both bunches were cut at a sharp angle before being placed in water. Just a straight-up side-by-side comparison to see what time will reveal. Close ups and all!